.ds sM 1b2
.ds sI 1.3
.ds sG "90/06/15 17:55:49"
.so macs
.ce 3
Location: Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent
Date: Wednesday April 4th 1990
People: Joan Terry

.de JT
.NM Joan
..
.MG
I gather you were down by Whitehall, by Downing Street for some of it.
.JT
Yeah.
.MG
Were you one of the people sitting down?
.JT
No, we didn't even know they \fIwere\fP sitting down, we were completely
blocked off from them,  We were on a square and we were surrounded by
police.  None of the seemed to know what the other side was doing.
We didn't even know what was happening in front, we just kept seeing
people being arrested, dragged over the barrier.  It's frightful.
.JT
Did you want to record this?
.MG
Yes, I'm rolling.
[...]

.JT
Right.  Well we must have been quite a long way back in the march
because by the time we got to Whitehall we could see in front of us that
Trafalgar Square was pretty full, but then we stopped.  I can't think
what time that was, about, perhaps, half past two, something like that,
and we were there till about four, more or less in the same position,
and what had happened, we only pieced it together afterwards, was that
some people had decided to sit down there.  Now, it would have been
quite easy for us to have gone, if we wanted to sit with them or go round
them into the square, but for some reason or other, the police decided
to split us off from the march, from the people in front, and we had
police on foot on front of us, barriers to the left, mounted police to
the right and mounted police behind us, and the ones behind us then said
``Move'', and we said, quite reasonably, ``We can't move'', and they
said ``Go on, move.  Get going, get going'', and started to push, and we
were pushing back because we could see that all that would happen would
be like a Hillsborough affair, that we would be pushing the people in front,
who would push the people in front, and so on.
Right in front of me there was a man with a toddler on his shoulders,
and there were quite a few children in that round (?).  By the way, we were
described, I think, in one of the papers as being one of the organised groups
we'd all had arranged to be together, one of these ridiculous...
We had the Tunbridge Wells group near us, some from small villages, some
from small towns, and family groups, all sorts of thing, and it really
was terrifying, because we were just being pressed and pressed and pressed
and insulted and abused and pushed.  It just made you so terribly angry.
I was just shaking with anger about it.  Eventually we managed to get
the message through that it was no good trying to push us along because
there was nowhere to go, so that threw them a bit, and then eventually
they managed to get the mounted police on our right to move, to retreat,
to go back so that we could actually go down a side street and, well,
either disperse, or we actually decided to go on to the square by another route
but we got to Northumberland Avenue, we met the riot police coming
down towards us, everyone running, we started to run as well.  That
makes you even angrier because you think ``Why am I running?  I've done
nothing wrong'', you know, just walking up the road.
.PP
I still feel, as I said before, that there was no sense of
organisation amongst the police, and I don't think they really cared
about it.  They were just out to, sort of, bully and push people.
There was an awful lot of anger and an awful lot of fear amongst people
with children there, and eventually they then tried to split us up,
age-wise and so on, and I kept having police say to me ``Did you want
to get out, dear?'', and I just ignored them because they were trying
to get some of the older people out, who looked as if they might get a
bit stroppy and we didn't want to go, because we thought that this
will give them the opportunity and they'll start bashing into some of
the youngsters.
.PP
I must say some of the youngsters on the march were marvelous.
I mean, you can see, I'm not young, exactly, and I was winded twice by the
police pushing, and they were all rushing round me saying ``Are you all
right, are you all right?''.  It was really very good, the youngsters,
mush more concerned.
.PP
I think the one thing that really got the cross was, they were
shouting, some of the young people were shouting to the police,
you know, ``We have got, there are children in here and older people'',
and the police just ignored them, and they said,
``Would you like there to be \fIyour\fP children or \fIyour\fP parents
that were trapped in here'', and they just laughed at them.  This was
the so-called `sensitive reaction' according to the police chief.
.MG
`Community policing'.
.JT
Yes, they just laughed at them, you know, as much as they just don't
give a toot, you know, about your parents and your children.
That was the whole attitude.  It was appalling, really frightening.
.MG
It was all pretty much the same sort of thing up our way.
The plain bobbies I actually felt sorry for.  Some of them, you could
see, they didn't want to be there.  They didn't want anything to do
with this.
.JT
Well, I mean, they're very vulnerable.  I mean, the chaps on horses,
I mean, I agree with what the guy said, I just hate animals being used.
I hate police dogs or any dogs that are used to, you know, for
aggressive purposes and the horses, I mean, of course the injure people,
they can't help it, they're so damn big.  I mean, I had the feeling of
that, I didn't know when... well I didn't tell you that where we had
the barrier on the left, well they suddenly whipped those barriers away
and sent another lot of mounted police there, so we were completely
surrounded at one point, and they just come barging through, and I mean,
they're holding the horses, but they're so big and they \fIpush\fP you
and I mean, it's not like anything else, It's not like, you know, a wall
or something, there are the horses legs, and their bodies are enormous,
they're towering above you.  I mean, they're frightening.  They really are.
.MG
And poor old horses don't really know what they're getting into.
.JT
Well, of course not, no.
.MG
They don't have the capacity to understand what they're doing.
.JT
I always think of the horse in Animal Farm, trying to walk carefully
so as not to tread on any of the other little animals at the meeting.
Yes, it's quite against a horse's instinct to be aggressive anyway.
.MG
Right, ok, cheers.